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Committee backs substitute allowing city-triggered feasibility studies for county splits

Political Subdivisions Committee · February 12, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

The committee gave a favorable recommendation to the first substitute of HB 2 12, which creates an alternate path for splitting very large counties by allowing a one-third-by-population coalition of cities to trigger a funded feasibility study and then a countywide ballot; the measure passed the committee 8–4.

Representative Tesher introduced HB 2 12 as an alternate route to split very large counties, saying the current petition route — signatures from one-fourth of a county’s registered voters — is impractical in counties like Salt Lake County. Under the first substitute the committee recommended, counties with populations over 1,000,000 could be the subject of a county split process initiated when petitioning municipalities that together represent at least one-third of the county’s population adopt triggering resolutions within the same calendar year.

The substitute requires those petitioning cities to fund a feasibility study that…

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